Not withstanding pesky little details like constantly blasting us with radiation and giving us skin cancer, the sun has been a pretty good friend to Earth. After all, from it, Earth draws a beautiful little thing called life.

We’re in what astronomers call a habitable zone. Think of it as an astronomical sweet spot; we’re close enough to a star to get what we need from it without getting melted by it, but not so far away that we’re stuck cold and dark.

It’s certainly an unbalanced relationship though: We need it more than it needs us. In fact, it doesn’t need us at all. If we disappeared tomorrow, the sun would just keep on cooking up the vast store of hydrogen in its core.

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